Weekend Unthreaded

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Scafetta 2013: Simple solar astronomical model beats IPCC climate models

Nicola Scafetta has a new paper (in long line of papers) on a semi-empirical model which has a better fit than Global Circulation Models (CGM) favored by the IPCC. We ought be careful not to read too much into it, but nor to ignore the message in it about the grand failure of the GCM’s. Scafetta used Fourier analysis to find six cycles, then uses those six cycles to produce a climate model he runs for as long as 2000 years which seems to match the best multiproxies. In terms of discovering the absolute truth about the climate, this is not an end-point way to use Fourier analysis, as it is just “curve fitting” With six flexible cycle frequencies (plus amplitude and phase) there are 18* 6 tuneable parameters, more than enough to model any wiggly line on a graph, and there are scores of astronomical cycles to pick from. *.[Nicola Scafetta replies to this below, pointing out he uses the “6 major detected astronomical oscillations”, and their phases are fixed. I am happy to be corrected. His model is more useful than I thought. Apologies for the misunderstanding. – Jo]

But Scafetta’s work suggests it’s madness not to pay […]

ABC parody: I’m so over your ALPBC partiality…

” I’m over and over

tryin’ to excuse your point of view

I’m over and over

Your slant and bias too

I’m over and over

being treated like a fool

And I’m over and over

continually funding you..”

“When it’s over you’ll discover

What a free market can do

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Paper suggests solar magnetic influence on Earth’s atmospheric pressure

“…the role of the Sun is one of the largest unknowns in the climate system”

Meteorologists are already aware that changes in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) can affect the polar regions of Earth. Now, for the first time Lam et al report the magnetic field appears to influence atmospheric pressure in the mid latitudes. Lam compared the average surface pressure at times when the magnetic field is either very strong or very weak and found a statistically significant wave structure similar to an atmospheric Rossby wave. They claim to show that this works through a mechanism that is a conventional meteorological process, and that the effect is large enough to influence weather patterns in the mid-latitudes. The size of the effect is similar to “initial analysis uncertainties” in “ensemble numerical weather prediction” (which I take to mean “climate models”).

They are suggesting that small changes in this solar influence on the upper atmosphere could produce important changes through “non-linear evolution of atmospheric dynamics”.

Jo suggests that IPCC-favoured climate models don’t include any solar magnetic effect at all, which is just one of many reasons why they don’t work.

The large scale wandering convolutions of the jet […]

Washington Times: Climate due to water cycle not carbon dioxide

I’m very glad to see this point being made in the mainstream media. Earth is a water planet (yet the models don’t do clouds, rain, snow or humidity well). This is pitched for The Washington Times audience, not a science blog, but it’s a point well made, and it’s good to see the point about positive feedback from water vapor, which I (and David Evans) have been making for so long, is getting out to the mainstream press. Readers will also find the North Atlantic hurricane statistics on predictions versus outcome rather stark. – Jo

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Climate change is dominated by the water cycle, not carbon dioxide

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in The Washington Times

Climate scientists are obsessed with carbon dioxide. The newly released Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that “radiative forcing” from human-emitted CO2 is the leading driver of climate change. Carbon dioxide is blamed for everything from causing more droughts, floods, and hurricanes, to endangering polar bears and acidifying the oceans. But Earth’s climate is dominated by water, not carbon dioxide.

Earth’s water cycle encompasses the salt water of the oceans, the fresh water of rivers and […]

The Climate Brick Road song — “surrender your neurology to the church of climatology”

This song is growing on me. It didn’t grab me in the first verse, but I was definitely smiling by the middle. A rollicking… satire.

I could see this going down very well at the right party. :- )

Thanks to James Black, a Tropicarnival music award winner, see his site. This song is part of an album “Songs From Inside The System”, and I hear it started as a short poem here. Support the musician who doesn’t follow the same meme as so many others, there are plenty more songs yet to be written about our collective craziness.

My favourite lines:

“Paying your carbon taxes,

paying trillions to the goldman saches,

surrender your neurology,

to the church of climatology,

that science garbology,

is new world theology.

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Weekend Unthreaded

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Popular Science stop comments, because debating science is dangerous, readers are dumb

Popular Science — a 141 year old science and technology publication — have announced they’re shutting down their comments entirely. Apparently they can’t cope with open debate of contentious scientific areas like climate change.

As usual, there are pat lines about “fostering debate” even as they close it down.

“It wasn’t a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.”

Actions speak louder than words.

Of the two posts used to justify the silencing, the first was about climate, and had all of 16 comments — two of which were spam (see Ninna and Lili) — the rest mostly skeptical, and one used crass language. The other post was about abortion (90 comments) — yes, killing the unborn is going to generate debate. Is that it?

The real problem here is their mission statement (as contained in the quote above) is profoundly unscientific. A scientist’s job is not to “spread the word of ‘science’ “, […]

Six questions the media should be asking the IPCC – by Bob Tisdale

It’s clear science journalists need some help. The IPCC are saying “The ocean ate my global warming” and most environment reporters just cut-n-paste this excuse — they fall for the breathtaking joules-to-the-22nd-figures — not realizing they convert to a mere 0.07C over nearly 50 years (as if we could measure the average temperature of the global oceans to a hundredth of a degree!). Worse, the warming we do find is so small, it supports the skeptical calculations, not the IPCC’s ones. I ran a tutorial for journalists at the end of the post, and asked Bob Tisdale (author of Climate Models Fail ) if he had some other questions. He did, oh boy, and here they are. Thanks to Bob. – Jo

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Questions the Media Should Be Asking the IPCC – The Hiatus in Warming Posted on October 3, 2013 by Bob Tisdale

Joanne Nova asked me to suggest questions the media should be asking the IPCC about their 5th Assessment Report (AR5). I’ve provided a few examples along with background information.

This post will discuss the slowdown in global warming since 1998 (or the halt since 2001) known as the hiatus. While the hiatus in warming […]

IPCC says abrupt irreversible clathrate methane, ice sheet collapse are unlikely.

For years we’ve been warned via the media that there was a risk of irreversible global catastrophe. Is the IPCC stepping back from those forecasts too? The words abrupt, irreversible, and tipping point didn’t make it into the Headline Points in 2013.

Reader Katabasis at Bishop Hill reports on the Royal Society meeting where abrupt and irreversible changes were discussed. Katabasis notes that in the IPCC Chapter 12 Table 12.4 many of the catastrophic changes being forecast are described as “unlikely” or “very unlikely” or even “exceptionally unlikely”. The only one now considered “likely” is that the Arctic might be ice free 40 years from now (which is a big step back from “ice free by 2013” as some commentators predicted). Moreover confidence is low.

Will IPCC authors now correct Gore, Flannery, or other commentators when they tell us that CO2 emissions will probably lead to abrupt or irreversible ice sheet collapse, or collapses of the monsoonal circulation or Atlantic currents. Note the IPCC is saying “low confidence” for long term megadroughts, and monsoon changes, which means, “we don’t know” rather than “unlikely”. But why spend billions to prevent something you have low confidence will happen?

Table 12.4: Components […]

Kill the IPCC says Judith Curry. After decades and billions there is nothing to show for it.

And the public conversation finally starts to move on to discussing not whether the IPCC is wrong, but why it was wrong, and what we need to do about it. Credit to Judith Curry and the Financial Post. I’ve posted a few paragraphs here. The whole story is in the link at the top. – Jo

Judith A. Curry, Special to Financial Post

Kill the IPCC: After decades and billions spent, the climate body still fails to prove humans behind warming

The IPCC is in a state of permanent paradigm paralysis. It is the problem, not the solution

The IPCC has given us a diagnosis of a planetary fever and a prescription for planet Earth. In this article, I provide a diagnosis and prescription for the IPCC: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.

In its latest report released Friday, after several decades and expenditures in the bazillions, the IPCC still has not provided a convincing argument for how much warming in the 20th century has been caused by humans.

We tried a simple solution […]

Seeking stories from schools and the new curriculum

Have you or your children challenged a teacher about something scientific? Were you treated fairly? Are you a teacher – if so, what are your thoughts on the new curriculum?

I would like to find out more about what is happening in our schools. I’m considering the new National Australian Curriculum, but comments related to the old curriculum and non-Australian curriculums are useful too. What kind of culture do our schools create. I would most appreciate both personal stories (privacy ensured) and comments about curriculum and educational matters. If you can’t write in comments, please email joanne AT this domain.

This link is probably the best for people who want to fossick : Australian Curriculum

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